


Collateral Damage

by nanda (nandamai)



Category: The Matrix (1999 2003 2003)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Movie, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-12-01
Updated: 2001-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:30:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nandamai/pseuds/nanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the real world, some days are harder than others. Takes place after the first movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

The room was really too small for two adults to share. In the mornings they tripped over each other. The bed could have been bigger, too. There was no option, though, short of separate quarters — and that was not an option they’d ever bothered to discuss.

Neo sank onto the narrow bunk before Trinity had even shut the door. His arms flopped to the sides, his feet hung off the edge. He watched as she sat in their only chair and bent to take off her boots. He rolled onto his side and kept watching, wordlessly. She dropped her boots to the floor with a metallic thud. Most things on the Nebuchadnezzar sounded, tasted, or smelled vaguely metallic.

She met his eyes and spoke quietly. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” He extended one arm towards her and brushed three fingers against her thigh.

All their days were long, but some were longer than others. Trinity let her head fall back against the wall and her eyes slip closed. “God, I’m tired,” she said with a small, uncharacteristic sigh. He thought she probably didn’t know she’d said it aloud. The thought made him smile, just a little.

He touched her thigh again. “I can’t imagine how you’ve been doing this for twelve years.”

“No,” she said, barely opening her eyes to look at him. “Some days I can’t either.”

She pulled herself up with an effort, already taking off her sweater and t- shirt. Neo watched her bare back while she folded the clothes and put them in the laundry bin. She said it was the only way to live in such a small space, but he knew how much it pained her to have one item in their room out of place. He knew, and he loved her for it.

In a moment he was standing behind her, his arms around her waist, his lips on her shoulder. She tensed when he touched her, then relaxed into his chest. He kissed the highest scar on her arm — hers were much better healed than his own. And she was more beautiful like this than in the leather and hair gel she wore in the Matrix. More beautiful because she was real, alive. And his.

“I’m fine, Neo.” She laid her own hands over his.

“I know you are.” And to keep from imagining what might have been, he traced a line up her neck with his tongue and nipped her jaw gently.

She hadn’t been in any more danger than usual, not really. But for a moment, just for a moment as he’d watched the coppertop she was fighting morph into an agent, he’d felt helpless. He hadn’t liked it. He still didn’t like it. And when the agent had thrown her, before he could reach them, before Morpheus could reach them — well. He hadn’t liked it. Their lives were too short already.

He breathed the words “I love you” into her ear.

Trinity, suddenly full of life where a moment ago she’d hardly been awake enough to stand, turned in his arms. One thing he’d realized about himself and Trinity — they could go from zero to sixty in a microsecond. Before he could kiss her, she drew his shirt over his head. He could tell how hungry she was when she dropped his clothes carelessly on the floor. His boots were next, then both of their pants, and then her cool, pale skin was all he could feel. She pulled him close and kissed him deeply.

Neo took two steps backwards and he was on his back on the bed, with Trinity astride his legs. Her breasts were a light, warm pressure on his chest, her tongue an insistent force in his mouth. His hands came to rest on her head, then on her shoulders, and finally her hips. Then he had a thought, and pulled back a little.

He rose up on one elbow, urging her onto her back. Her eyebrows arched in an amused question, but she played along. Usually Trinity preferred to be on top, in control, and usually that was just fine with Neo.

“No,” he said, moving above her, taking both of her hands in his. He wanted her to know, he had to tell her … he wasn’t sure what, exactly. He didn’t have the right words. The words hadn’t been invented yet for what he needed to say. She watched him silently, raising her hips a little to brush against the insides of his thighs.

“No,” he said again, and weaved his fingers through hers. He held her hands above her head, almost losing his balance as he leaned down to kiss her. He’d never … god, no woman had ever tasted like Trinity, smelled like Trinity. He didn’t know if that was because she was the only woman he’d made love to in the real world. He didn’t care. But he also remembered her scent from the first time he’d met her, in the Matrix. She’d stood so close to him in that seedy, unreal Goth club, talking into his ear, her shoulder white and bare beneath his chin … and she’d smelled this good even then.

“You know,” he said, rising for air and watching her eyelids fall heavy over her ice-blue eyes, “you know, the night I met you. In the Matrix.”

“Hmm?” It was somewhere between a sound of pleasure and a question, but he noticed her eyes were a little wider now. He’d got her attention.

“I have never wanted anyone as much as I wanted you that night.”

“Really. Even more than now?” Her face was completely innocent, still as marble, but her hips were moving in a way that made it difficult for Neo to concentrate on the conversation.

“Well,” he said, “it’s — oh — it’s different now.”

“Different.” She pushed her knees outward against his, and he got the hint. He moved to kneel between her legs.

“Because at the time I thought I’d never have a chance in hell with you.”

“And now you think you might have a shot?” This she punctuated by wrapping her legs around him, locking her ankles against his back. She was evil, she really was, and he had to kiss her. Her lips smiled into his. He loved it when he could make her smile.

Another memory, this one much less pleasant, forced itself into his brain. It was followed by a thought that haunted him on particularly bad days: that they didn’t deserve to enjoy each other so much when the rest of the world was such hell. He bit her lower lip, hoping her response would make it all disappear.

She fidgeted beneath him, trying half-heartedly to free her hands.

Not bad, he told himself, but you can do better. He brought his head lower and teased one nipple with his teeth. This prompted a completely unexpected, high-pitched moan. Nice work, Anderson, he thought, grinning against her skin. Making Trinity smile was fantastic, but making Trinity lose control was even better. She wasn’t quite there yet, but there was still time.

“I heard that,” he said.

“Heard what?”

“You know exactly what.” He drew a circle around her breast with the tip of his tongue. She dug one heel into the small of his back, pulling his hips closer to hers.

It nearly threw him; he had to lower his elbows to the bed to keep from falling on top of her, but he didn’t let her hands go. Instead he pushed his hips forward just enough to rub his warmth against hers.

He made the same motion again, and again, and Trinity arched her back so they met at a different angle. She tilted her hips to meet his every move, faster and faster. Her head was thrown back, her eyes tightly closed. “Jesus,” she said. “Neo …”

And that was it — he’d reached his limit. It was always her voice that did it. He brought her wrists together, so he could hold them both in one of his hands; and with the other, he reached between them to find his way inside her.

Hot, so hot, and silky-wet. She held her breath as he entered, and they each gave a small sigh of pleasure when he was completely buried in her body. Neo’s free hand found its way to her breast, his thumb now circling one red, swollen nipple.

He froze until she opened her eyes — and he knew he was grinning like an idiot, very proud of the punchline he was about to deliver. “Yeah,” he said, “I think I have a shot with you.”

He kissed her before she could respond, but she took her revenge by digging her heel into his back again. Neo interpreted that as his signal to move. And slowly, very slowly, he withdrew, then plunged back in, hard. Trinity arched against him, pulling her lips away to draw in a ragged breath. He slid out again, and in, and reclaimed her mouth.

Trinity met every thrust and ground her hips in a circle against him. Neo realized he was forgetting to breathe, but he really didn’t give a damn. The only thing that mattered was Trinity, bucking beneath him, making small sounds in her throat that sent him careening towards the edge.

Dammit, he thought in one brief moment of clarity, I’m trying to make her lose it, not myself. He freed his mouth from hers, sucked in a long, deep breath, and entered her again at an angle he knew would send her over. His reward was a small scream that he silenced with his own lips, and a deep shudder that he could feel as it radiated from her core to the tips of her fingers. One more thrust, and he followed her into oblivion.

As they both caught their breath afterwards, Neo let her hands go and rolled onto his side, pulling her with him, their bodies still joined. Trinity tilted her head for one gentle kiss, and dragged him closer with a leg that was still thrown over his hip.

“You screamed,” he said.

“I absolutely did not scream. I do not scream.”

“You do.”

“I don’t.”

Her arm was folded against his chest; he took her hand in his again and massaged it a little. As he watched her eyes, suddenly his high was gone — like a crash after a dose of the drugs he’d played around with in college. He knew, with utter, frightening clarity, that one day she would be gone, and he wouldn’t be able to save her.

Trinity must have noticed the change in his expression. She nudged him with her elbow. “What?” she asked.

“Trin” — he rarely used the nickname, but for some reason it came out of him now — “You know what I want? What I really, really want?”

Her narrowed eyes, still playful, seemed to say, I thought I just gave it to you. But she didn’t speak, just waited for him to go on.

“More than the end of this goddamn war, more than saving all those people … ” He sighed, knowing that what he was about to say was not what the real world expected — or needed — from their Messiah.

“What is it, Neo?”

“Some days I just don’t care about any of it. Some days all I want is to take you away somewhere … a cave or something, it doesn’t matter … and just hold you for about three weeks.”

He could tell he’d surprised her. He watched her soft, sad smile — or what passed for a smile, with Trinity, a slight upwards curl of both corners of her mouth — and was suddenly unsure how she’d respond.

“When did you become a romantic?” she asked in a voice tinged with irony.

He grinned again. He couldn’t help it. “I’m not. It’s completely selfish.”

She loosened her hand from his grip and lightly touched his cheek. “Well,” she said. “I’ll take that too.”


End file.
